Friday, April 12, 2013

The fate of post-Assad Syria may hinge on whom the rebels hate more, the US or Iran

The Syrian catastrophe grinds on, with no clear end in sight. According to serious estimates, the death toll passed 60,000 by January (less than two years after the violence began) and will almost certainly go well beyond 100,000 in the end, not to mention millions of refugees fleeing to nearby countries or displaced inside Syria. In the meantime, the ongoing death and devastation have led to increasing economic collapse, institutional breakdown, and escalating polarization between different religious and ethnic communities.

In the short term, the most likely prospect seems to be a continued bloody stalemate, but otherwise even the most informed predictions are speculative. It looks increasingly unlikely that the Assad regime will be able to survive, but it might just manage to do that (with the support of outside backers like Iran, Russia, Hizbullah, and so on), or it might suddenly unravel—or there might be an attempt to partition the country along sectarian lines (and ethnic lines, if one includes the strong push for greater autonomy in some Kurdish regions of northeast Syria). We might see a panicked flight by the Christian minorities, who add up to some 10% of the population, and who tend to be very anxious about the prospect of losing the protections offered by the current regime ... or, with luck, we might not. What is probably safe to say is that the ultimate social and political outcomes are unlikely to be pleasant, though we can hope for the best.

=> At all events, it's important not to think of this struggle as a simple conflict between good guys and bad guys. It's a little more complicated than that. There's no question (at least, in my mind) that the Assad regime is a repressive, corrupt, brutal, and generally reprehensible despotism that deserves little or no sympathy. (Of course, the consequences of its collapse may bring to mind the old Middle Eastern saying that even a decade under an unjust and tyrannical sultan is better than a week of political chaos without a sultan.) And there are certainly some good guys in the opposition. But there are also bad guys on all sides—not least because the opposition to the Assad regime is not a unified movement with clear common goals, but a diverse collection of armed and unarmed tendencies with quite different agendas, who are being supported, funded, and in some cases armed by outside forces that also have conflicting agendas.

Those outside actors include not only governments, but also increasing numbers of trans-national Sunni jihadists (to match the Hizbullah fighters from Lebanon operating in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime). And as the civil war goes on, the military significance of Islamist extremists on the anti-regime side, sometimes linked to wider jihadist networks, seems to be on the increase. They have the kind of fanatical commitment, clarity of purpose, and willingness for self-sacrifice that can offer significant advantages in the context of a chaotic civil war. They also appear to be getting disproportionate amounts of support, funding, arms, and reinforcements from outside Syria.

Back in September a US official was quoted expressing concern about this: "The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it," And just a few days ago the very non-official analyst Spencer Ackerman highlighted a more recent symptom of those tendencies:

One of the main Syrian rebel groups has now formally joined al-Qaida’s Iraqi offshoot. [....] Meet the — deep breath — al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-’Iraq wa-l-Sham, the new name for the joint Iraqi-Syrian extremist [organization] coined in a statement yesterday by al-Qaida Iraq chief Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi. As Cole Bunzel explains at Jihadica, the al-Nusra Front, which Washington already considers a terrorist organization, was apparently always intended to be an adjunct of the Iraqi terror group. And while the U.S. has structured its non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition as a bulwark against the extremism of Nusra, the move further distinguishes the Nusra Front from the rest of the Syrian opposition: al-Baghdadi warned Syrians not to “exchange these years of oppression for the religion of democracy."

=> All of these developments underline the significance of the issues raised by Karim Sadjadpour and Firas Maksadin in a piece they wrote in February (see below). For the moment, I will simply pass it along without much further commentary, except to say that their discussion is worth reading in full and pondering carefully. (The title of the piece could use some refinement—but that title was presumably written by editors, not by the authors.) In practical terms, here is their bottom line:

The question for the U.S. and allies such as Turkey is what can they do to ensure that moderate factions in the Syrian opposition come to dominate in a post-Assad Syria, and that they will prefer to work with the U.S. and its friends in the region, rather than with Iran. [....]

[H]istory has made the Barack Obama administration
reluctant to decisively enter the Syria fray, fearful of being sucked
into an Islamist brier patch or another costly but fruitless exercise in
nation-building. Benign neglect, however, hasn’t been so benign. [....]

A greater U.S. role [JW: in terms of more active support and assistance, not military intervention] won’t render Syria an American-allied democracy. That possibility, if it ever existed, has long been lost. But continued U.S. inaction risks leaving Syria at the mercy of Iran and Sunni extremists whose intolerance, and hatred of the U.S., dwarf any concerns they may have for the well-being of Syria and its people. Such an outcome would haunt Syria, the Middle East and the U.S. for years to come.

There are major uncertainties and real dilemmas involved here, so they deserve careful consideration. More on these subjects soon, perhaps ...

As Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad clings mercilessly to power, hopes that his regime will be replaced by a stable, tolerant democracy are being dwarfed by fears of prolonged sectarian strife and Islamist radicalism. The outcome will hinge in part on a simple question: Whom do Syria’s diverse rebels hate more, the U.S. or Iran?

The anomaly of power in modern Syria -- where an Alawite minority rules over a Sunni Arab majority -- was never sustainable, and few countries stand to lose more from the regime’s collapse than the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syria has been Iran’s only consistent ally since the 1979 revolution, providing the leadership in Tehran with a crucial thoroughfare to Iran’s most important regional asset, the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

As a result, Iran has done its utmost to keep Assad afloat, providing billions of dollars of support as well as strategic
aid to crush dissent. To relieve pressure on the Syrian
military, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is
reportedly training two paramilitary organizations, Jaysh al
Sha’abi and the Shabiha, which boast 50,000 fighters and are
modeled on the Bassij militia that violently quashed Iran’s 2009
popular uprisings.

Strategic Choice

This support can only delay, not prevent, Assad’s demise. Thereafter Iran will face a strategic decision: whether to continue supporting a predominantly Alawite militia that
represents only a small fraction of Syrian society, or to engage the Sunni Islamists who are poised to wield power in Damascus once Assad falls. Iran’s leaders will try to embrace the Sunni radicals, and if that fails they will work with the Shabiha to prevent the formation of a stable, anti-Iranian order in Syria.

What’s most important for Iran is not the sectarian makeup of Syria’s future rulers, but a like-minded ideological worldview premised on resistance to the U.S. and Israel. As Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once said, “We will support
and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world.” Iran’s Sunni allies Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are cases in point.

Despite sharing common enemies with some Syrian rebels, there is no guarantee that Iran will be able to befriend the same forces it has helped to massacre over the past two years. Anti-Shiite, anti-Persian sentiment is rife among Syria’s rebels, and the attraction of Iranian petrolargesse is eclipsed by the deeper pockets of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The question for the U.S. and allies such as Turkey is what can they do to ensure that moderate factions in the Syrian opposition come to dominate in a post-Assad Syria, and that they will prefer to work with the U.S. and its friends in the region, rather than with Iran.

That outcome isn’t guaranteed, either. Iranian influence tends to thrive in countries suffering power vacuums and tumult, which they can attribute to U.S. or Israeli policies. They helped create Hezbollah after the 1982 Israeli invasion of civil-war era Lebanon. And in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, they helped entrench an Iraqi political class that is closer to Iran than the U.S. As Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Moshe Ya’alon, put it last year: “The Iranians know how to exploit every area and country that isn’t properly governed.”

Sordid History

This sordid history has made the Barack Obama administration reluctant to decisively enter the Syria fray, fearful of being sucked into an Islamist brier patch or another costly but fruitless exercise in nation-building.

Benign neglect, however, hasn’t been so benign. Syria’s humanitarian crisis has reached epic proportions, with more than 60,000 people killed and 2.5 million people displaced. The sense of abandonment and desperation felt by many Syrians has served to strengthen the most radical elements of the rebel forces, some of whom are thought to be aligned with al-Qaeda.

Syria’s hemorrhaging will continue to fuel radicalism until there is a change of political leadership in Damascus. In order to expedite this process, the U.S. administration must inhibit Iran’s ability to arm and finance Assad.

This requires coercing the Iraqi government -- the beneficiary of $2 billion in annual U.S. military aid -- to halt the steady transit of Iranian military hardware and personnel to
Syria. It also means making clear to Lebanon that it must curtail Hezbollah’s cross-border operations into Syria, and ensure that Iran can’t use Lebanese banks to evade international
sanctions.

[JW: That reasonable-sounding suggestion strikes me as rather unrealistic, since it presumes that the Lebanese government can control what Hizbullah does. As Sadjadpour and Maksad are surely aware, the actual situation in Lebanon is closer to the other way around. But if and when the Assad regime in Syria collapses, Hizbullah is going to be in deep trouble, and it knows that.]

The U.S. and its allies should expose the governments of both countries as abettors to Assad’s criminal regime, should they continue to be complicit in Iran’s operations.

Concurrently, the U.S. and like-minded allies such as Turkey should strengthen the competence and cohesiveness of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition
Forces, the exiled body they helped shape. This might encourage reluctant fence sitters to abandon Assad’s ship, shortening the duration of what will otherwise be an increasingly sectarian conflict.

Aid channeled through the opposition council, in
coordination with credible international nonprofit
organizations, should provide for millions who have been
displaced. Not doing so risks leaving Iran and radical Sunni
Islamists to exploit human suffering for recruitment purposes.

A nascent rebel joint military command, working under the
opposition council, would allow anti-regime forces to better
coordinate operations and steer fighters away from jihadi
ideology, and could lay the foundation for a future national
army. Military assistance, direct from the U.S. or through regional allies, must flow through this joint command. Doing so will afford moderates a better chance to succeed against both the Iranian-backed militias and the growing numbers of Sunni jihadists who are fighting in Syria.

A greater U.S. role won’t render Syria an American-allied democracy. That possibility, if it ever existed, has long been lost. But continued U.S. inaction risks leaving Syria at the
mercy of Iran and Sunni extremists whose intolerance, and hatred of the U.S., dwarf any concerns they may have for the well-being of Syria and its people. Such an outcome would haunt Syria, the Middle East and the U.S. for years to come.

--------------------
(Karim Sadjadpouris a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Firas Maksad is director of
New Policy Advisors, a Washington advisory group. The opinions
expressed are their own. You can follow them on twitter atSadjadpourandMaksad.)

About Me

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who has been teaching most recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the New School for Social Research, He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2015-2016 and a Research Associate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College.
(Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.)